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Another issue is that from the standpoint of evidence-based medicine, nobody really knows just how much of the placebo effect is due to power of suggestion. The placebo effect also includes such factors as regression toward the mean--which is another way of saying, "A lot of things get better over time on their own."

The older medical literature suggests that the suggestion component is quite strong, but some modern studies indicate that except for subjective complaints such as pain, placebos don't really do much. But placebo studies are not conducted the way they once were. At one time, it was considered OK to lie to a study subject. Modern ethical standards require that the subject be fully informed of the possibility that they may receive a placebo. So were the older studies wrong, or is the placebo weaker when a patient suspects that they may be receiving a placebo?

They aren't all that bright: in one survey it was found that 58% cheated during medical school. Personally, I find the most irritating thing about doctors and dentists is their smugness. I'm not sure if they are trained to act that way or if that's just the innate tendency for the type of people medical school attracts. Either way, it makes it a annoying frustration to go for a doctor's visit. E.g., last time at the dentist I was complaining that they were x-raying my teeth too often and I was worried about leukemia and they actually told me that it's no more radiation than a cell phone. That might be true, but it's the WAVELENGTH of the radiation that causes the issues because the x-ray is short enough to break bonds in DNA. Either he was an idiot or he thought I was. I'm not going back.

First, you CAN have cancer of the cervix after hysterectomy...not all hysterectomies involve removing the cervix. Second, if you have a hysterectomy for cervical cancer, you still need screening: See this PubMed Article Third, the literature for screening after hysterectomy for benign disease is still evolving. See this PubMed Article

OP is a troll, I would say, and the title is alarmist and misleading. Evidence based medicine has been around for a while, the trouble is it is very expensive and difficult to perform, and just as hard to implement.

First, you CAN have cancer of the cervix after hysterectomy...not all hysterectomies involve removing the cervix. Second, if you have a hysterectomy for cervical cancer, you still need screening: See this PubMed Article Third, the literature for screening after hysterectomy for benign disease is still evolving. See this PubMed Article

OP is a troll, I would say, and the title is alarmist and misleading. Evidence based medicine has been around for a while, the trouble is it is very expensive and difficult to perform, and just as hard to implement.

Pretty soon the people not in favor of using embryonic stem research will likely join this thread and start talking about how we can just use adult cells and how that means we should never do any research on embryonic stem cells. However, this research, like most research involving adult stem cells, relied on prior work with embryonic stem cells. This sort of research is only doable because of embryonic stem cell research.

Then it's a good thing President Bush funded such research. From HERE:

Federal Policy
President Bush's Criteria

On August 9th, 2001, Former President George W. Bush announced that federal funds may be awarded for research using human embryonic stem cells if the following criteria are met:

        * The derivation process (which begins with the destruction of the embryo) was initiated prior to 9:00 P.M. EDT on August 9, 2001.
        * The stem cells must have been derived from an embryo that was created for reproductive purposes and was no longer needed.
        * Informed consent must have been obtained for the donation of the embryo and that donation must not have involved financial inducements.

NIH's Role

The NIH, as the Federal government's leading biomedical research organization, is implementing Former President Bush's policy. The NIH funds research scientists to conduct research on existing human embryonic stem cells and to explore the enormous promise of these unique cells, including their potential to produce breakthrough therapies and cures.

Investigators from 14 laboratories in the United States, India, Israel, Singapore, Sweden, and South Korea have derived stem cells from 71 individual, genetically diverse blastocysts. These derivations meet Former President Bush's criteria for use in federally funded human embryonic stem cell research. The NIH has consulted with each of the investigators who have derived these cells. These scientists are working with the NIH and the research community to establish a research infrastructure to ensure the successful handling and the use of these cells in the laboratory.

It scares me when nitwits like you post garbage like the following:

Without measurements, I can say with certainty that our climate is changing.

Because as we all well know, human memory is fallible.. Not just that, extremely fallible. Not to mention extremely vulnerable to self-delusion, unconsciously-induced Selection Bias and Confirmation Bias, and to false memory planting.

You may not agree with the scope and severity of the climate change. Fine. But to deny that it is happening shows a complete inability to observe the world around you over the course of decades.

"To deny that it is happening" - I didn't see that. I did see an argument over whether it is man-made, and the entire ARTICLE is about the supposed "scientists" who are engaging in poor science because they are engaging in Selection Bias and Confirmation Bias quite deliberately, invalidating all of their supposed "research."

Citation needed.

Consider, for example:
http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/Genetic/guide/activity2-1.htm

It says 0.1% between individuals.

And so does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation

Oh, and another bit of trivia: they actually had a higher average brain size than Homo Sapiens.

Larger than that of modern humans, and thus certainly larger than that of contemporaneous humans, yes. But:

And in a smaller body, too.

No. They were "shorter" in stature than humans, but more massive even than *modern* humans (*fit* specimens anyway, which is what we're considering): ~75kg "inhumanly"-well-muscled frame on a very heavily-built skeleton about 166cm tall for males. ref

Their body surface area to mass ratio is also smaller than that of humans. ref

So if we go by the popular brain-mass/body-mass metric...

...they should actually be a little *less* intelligent, on average; after all, the ratio of their body mass to cranial capacity (to say nothing of their brain size, of which cranial capacity is only an upper limit) is smaller, not larger. As for the brain morphology itself, the braincase and likely the brain were both shorter and more elongated than those of humans. Hard to imagine a more developed neocortex on such a brain, though perhaps it's possible. I don't have a source offhand.

So we're not talking just as in "looks like a human", but something that was definitely [!?] just as sentient and self-aware as a human.

You mean probably as sentient, or approximately as sentient. Nice try at perpetuating a false inferiority complex though.

Otherwise I agree with your sentiment that we ought to accord "being" or "right" to other intelligent creatures, except I wouldn't base this on something so philosophically shaky as mere "empathy" (which perhaps you used for expedience rather than precision).

Check this out for some fun reading:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html/

Here is a software analogy to vaccination, thinking of a vaccine like a software patch. These are the sorts of meta issues that are rarely discussed when focusing on pseudo-arguments about the results of specific studies.

Vaccinations are like software patches that are proprietary closed-source products, that companies make money off of selling, and that patch installation service providers use to drive business throughput for their other services. Much of the regulation of these patches is done by people who have a direct or indirect commercial stake in this industry and convincing people they need the patch.

Vaccinations are like software patches that are generally released with only testing against a small population of software environments; this is like Microsoft releasing a single patch for everyone which modifies *all* x86 PC software in the world (including everything on GNU/Linux) after having tested it on a few versions of Windows and looking at the performance afterwards of a few major applications over a few months or a couple years. Anything a few years down the road is considered not to be related to the patch and in any case would be hard to prove.

Vaccinations are like software patches that you can't back out -- ever.

Vaccinations are like software patches that change their code (formulation and quality control) year to year even if they are said to be to prevent the same problem, with claims for the "safe and effective" nature of previous patches being used to justify claims about new untested patches from this year's batch.

Vaccinations are like software patches that claim to be effective against last years trojan or worm or virus, ignoring the fact that trojans and worms and viruses mutate.

Vaccinations are like software patches that usually only work in a positive way for ten years or so.

Vaccination are like software patches that might be pushing some unknown limit of total patches that can be accepted and still have decent computing performance in the face of new demands on the system.

Vaccinations are like software patches that are built on a culture of patching security vulnerabilities without ever emphasizing basic security precautions like using encryption or administrator-level authentication. For example, extended breastfeeding through the toddler years promotes the general immunological wellbeing of a person for life:
    http://www.llli.org//NB/NBextended.html
Thus, one might think infant formula should be prescription only (for rare special cases) since formula decreases "herd immunity", but formula is available everywhere without a prescription, showing a double standard here. Chances are about half of US slashdotters were raised entirely on formula and will create a lifetime infection risk for everyone around them as well as suffer from worse health. Yet, formula feeding is supposedly "a matter of personal choice" and was promoted by the medical care community in the past and continues to be heavily promoted among new parents by that industry. Similarly, good nutrition, enough sleep, avoiding bad stress but having enough good stress, having face-to-face friends, and similar things, promote wellness, but junk food, allnighters, programming death marches, and spending too much time on slashdot are all legal. :-)

There are a bunch more analogies one could make, thought they are more abstract, related to co-evolution or auto-immune disorders.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115571

Anyway, the bigger picture is being missed here it seems to me. That is why it is so hard to assess risk versus reward. That is not to argue that any specific vaccine or schedule has any specific consequence, although administering HepB vaccine at birth to children of non-positive mothers certainly seems questionable to me.

I know of at least one study in a peer-reviewed journal citing a link between Hib and Hep-B vaccination and development of childhood asthma. The Hep-B link was stronger. Issues like this tend to get lost in all the thimerosal/autism noise.

Here's a link to the abstract.

Oddly enough, "Castrix" has been used as a trade name for a particularly nasty rat poison.

Arctic Ice? See this

For some reason the second article linked to does not show, only some of the comments do. But the original article linked to though says the sea ice grew back fast. Googling "arctic sea ice" returns a lot of links saying the same. One of them though says "January Arctic Sea Ice Extent Sixth Lowest In History". So while the ice that came back may of come fast, not all of it did.

You cannot blame Bush for Saddam's behavior.

You're right but you can blame the Bush admin for calling Ritter a traitor. And what about the silence about those who said there were no WMDs? I clearly recall seeing then Secretary of State Colin Powell standing up in front the UN Security Council with a bunch of documents saying there were a number of weapons or factories that could make WMDs. But there wasn't anything denying this.

Nor was anything said about how the US helped Saddam when he did use WMDs. Yes, the US did help Saddam when he used WMDs. All through the Reagan years and part of the first Bush's term in office Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam. On 27 July 1987 Saddam used chemical weapons against a Kurdish city for instance. It was only after Saddam invaded Kuwait when support for him ended.

Falcon

I believe his main intent was to counter the *inflation* of the source by making it appear to be endorsed by UNL, as he said.

Also, he did provide an alternative and disagreeing source of information - the Wikipedia article.

You could also read a 2005 NIH report (PDF): http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov:8080/cs.html?charset=iso-8859-1&url=http%3A//ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/eleventh/profiles/s064ddt.pdf&qt=DDE&col=030roc&n=1&la=en

Summary: 1978 study shows no evidence of carcinogenicity in technical-grade DDT, TDE, and DDE in diet of mice and rats [a fact conveniently cited out of context by a variety of pro-DDT publications]; 1991 study shows oral administration of breakdown products DDE and TDE show definite carcinogenicity in hamsters, some groups (by gender and species) of mice and rats (something that was also shown in part in the 1978 study).

As such, despite insufficient evidence in humans (primarily due to heavy confounding of epidemiological data by other pesticides) it is classified as "Reasonably Anticipated to be a Human Carcinogen".

oops. I was fooled by a date listed in the search I did on the National Toxicology Program's site - that is not a more recent study.

Instead, a 2005 publication (PDF): http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov:8080/cs.html?charset=iso-8859-1&url=http%3A//ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/eleventh/profiles/s064ddt.pdf&qt=DDE&col=030roc&n=1&la=en Same conclusion.

Worth noting: that UNL link is a cached version of an page *from another site* from a course outline for Chemistry teachers, so NOT a UNL page.
http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869EInfoFiles/pubCHEM869E-Info080.html
The linked-to site ( http://www.altgreen.com.au/ ) is down, but the google cache reveals this:
"This site is primarily an information exchange and contains reviews of environmental issues. It presents the alternative green view and does not endorse . . ."

Also linked from the UNL course is an NIH page describing DDT toxicity.
http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869E/CHEM869ELinks/ntp-server.niehs.nih.gov/htdocs/8_RoC/RAC/DDT.html
or you can read a more recent study:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=0704C8A4-F52A-BE78-5C81C16C5C1F14C9
Summary: in some groups (rodents separated by strain and gender), no evidence of carcinogenicity for some/all of DDT, TDE, and p.p.-DDE [a fact conveniently cited out of context by a variety of pro-DDT publications] . . . but all showed definite carcinogenicity in at least some groups. As such, it is classified as "Reasonably Anticipated to be a Human Carcinogen".

Basically, on the whole, people who use prostitutes...never get the clap or have their wallet stolen.

FAIL!

Basically, on the whole, people who use heroin...never OD, get a bad batch, get sick or die.

EPIC FAIL!

Wow. I can understand why you think that people that use cracked software never get rooted.

(Not that you care but the NIH shows that 22% of the adults in their study ODed on Heroin: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2039886 and life expectancy decreased by 18 years)

if the big-money donaters want to improve things. However, throwing money at the problem seems to the way these guys operate. Pretty much the SOP for the unimaginative.

http://www.nih.gov/news/research_matters/december2007/12102007kids.htm

The issues in education start well before school age. In the 6-month to 4-year old range, most of the development takes place. Get the kids involved in the pre-school, and things take off.

Your brain expects a connection to remain viable permanently.

Actually neurons, brain cells constantly make and break connections. Dendrites and axons form new connections through synapses. Some of these connections are temporary. Heck, new neurons even grow in the adult brain and definitely form new connections.

Falcon

This shouldn't be a problem for type II diabetes, that represents large majority of cases of diabetes in the world. I agree with you that in type II diabetes, insulin resistance is the one to blame. But the blood sugar values go high only after about 50% of beta cells are destroyed because of "burnout" after years of hyperinsulinemia. In those patients, you could theoretically recover insulin production with implantation of beta cells, and those people wouldn't need insulin any more. This would be a big breakthrough, if it would be possible ...

This article spits on my previous claims, but I am still somehow sure, that we could somehow down-regulate normal cells to act the same:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17274951&ordinalpos=22&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

In type I diabetes, researchers are working on a special "cage", that could protect implanted cells from autoimmune response, while preserving the nutrition and other staff for those cells.

That is not exactly right. There actually are reports about larger studies using cord blood transplantation in leukemia. In the UK people are working on standard treatment protocols for cord blood transplantations.

First of all, disclaimer: I am a molecular biologist working on gene therapy of the blood system. Cord blood banking has been around for quite a while. In the early days, storing cord blood wasn't a very viable option, mainly because we didn't know how to grow a sufficient number of blood stem cells from the tiny amount of cells in a cord blood sample. This question seem to have been solved and cord blood transplants are used in leukemia cases What makes cord blood banking even more interesting IMHO, is all the research going on in the reprogramming fieldPeople try to 'reset' a cell to a 'embryonic' state and guide its development to the desired tissue (liver and pancreatic tissues are currently under investigation) For these kinds of approaches, cord blood cells might be very suitable, since it essentially is 'newborn' tissue. In the end, it would be really good to have some cord blood saved if you need it for treatment 10-20 years from now. The chances of needing it might, however, be quite slim.

First of all, disclaimer: I am a molecular biologist working on gene therapy of the blood system. Cord blood banking has been around for quite a while. In the early days, storing cord blood wasn't a very viable option, mainly because we didn't know how to grow a sufficient number of blood stem cells from the tiny amount of cells in a cord blood sample. This question seem to have been solved and cord blood transplants are used in leukemia cases What makes cord blood banking even more interesting IMHO, is all the research going on in the reprogramming fieldPeople try to 'reset' a cell to a 'embryonic' state and guide its development to the desired tissue (liver and pancreatic tissues are currently under investigation) For these kinds of approaches, cord blood cells might be very suitable, since it essentially is 'newborn' tissue. In the end, it would be really good to have some cord blood saved if you need it for treatment 10-20 years from now. The chances of needing it might, however, be quite slim.

I was going to flame you but then I re-read your post and I somewhat agree with you.

But I don't think it's fair to lump parents into two categories - those close-minded fundamentalists who shelter their children, and open-minded free thinkers who teach their children to make their own decisions. That's stereotypical nonsense.

Violence is part of life. Animals eat other animals, and even my three-year-old daughter is starting to understand that. But gratuitous violence which we watch for our enjoyment and amusement is not part of life and I think kids deserve to be sheltered from as much unnecessary violence as possible. We put too much emphasis on our right to be entertained, and justifying our appetite for violence in our entertainment by mocking anyone who disagrees with us (not that you are doing that) but I think a kid's right to an innocent, happy childhood should take precedence.

For the record, I have enjoyed violent FPS games since Wolfenstein 3D but when I'm playing STALKER I don't let my daughter watch because I don't want to fill her mind with violent images. She used to sit on my lap while I would play Half-Life 2 but when she started trying to tell me which gun to use I realized that maybe it would be more appropriate to shut down the game and go play soccer with her outside.

I'll save the "appreciation of violent art" discussion for when she's in her teens, when her reasoning skills really start to develop.

That was kind of a long-winded way of saying I'm glad the team put a no-blood option in the game. That actually could broaden their audience. My wife played and loved the first two Fallout games because there was a violence filter. We passed on Fallout 3 because as far as I can tell there is no such filter (at least, when I contacted the company directly to ask this question I received a useless generic form letter which did not answer the question).

More likely is that it stimulates retrograde signaling pathways, which are implicated in the formation and maintenance of long-term memories.

This is because the chemical receptors of neurons implicated with this process are stimulated by "endo-cannabinoids", or, molecules created by the brain which are chemically similar to THC found in cannabis. Ingesting THC (in one form or another...) will stimulate these receptors, which then triggers neurons to fire.

When you stop to consider that an Alzheimer's afflicted brain has major damage going on, and then also consider the implications of neuroplasticity along with this induced retrograde signal propagation, it could be seen that by stimulating neurons that are failing or near inoperable, their information could be transferred to healthier tissues, and retained, rather than simply "lost."

It's a bit like running FSCK on your brain, in an attempt to recover data from bad sectors.

Cannabis/Marijuana is carcinogenic, and about four times as carcinogenic as tobacco.

Since you didn't give any references I'll assume you're just blowing hot air.

By way of contrast, why don't you read some peer-reviewed articles.

You were a Mac user. Then why the hell did you come to Linux?

Apparently for some people sexual orientation can change over time.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15803251?dopt=Abstract

Never, ever, stick your penis in a black hole. If you think the damage from a vacuum cleaner is bad, wait until you see what a black hole will do.

IANA physician or pharmacist, so this isn't qualified medical advice. Do research from better sources than Slashdot when health is concerned. This is just a tip to a couple of those sources.

They actually recommend against aspirin as a
fever reducer in children under the age of about 16, too. Reye's syndrome is a rare but dangerous sickness that can be triggered in victims of the chicken pox or flu viruses when given aspirin.

Any viral infection, particularly one in which the first symptom is fever, should not be treated with aspirin. This is true according to the NIH even in adults, but I've always heard it was especially true for children.

See the pages about Reye's at MedicineNet, WebMD, or the US National Institutes of Health or ask your doctor for more info.

Aspirin also has other contraindications, but it has many positive uses as a medicine. Very little in life is without drawbacks, unfortunately.

From six months ago, so some links may be dead...

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=609029&cid=24137949

Atmospheric Thermal Depletion, baby.

Marcus smokes all of the crack in the walls and goes on a rampage after discovering a bug in his OS causes his laptop to die.

He shoots everybody in the house before beginning an armed standoff with the SWAT team, then kills 3 cops(one in full riot gear) before a sniper in a police helicopter shoots the gun out of his hand. Stunned but unharmed, Marcus then slips and falls off the roof into his unkempt wading pool before he is transanally disemboweled by the pool's drain.

One of the biggest myths of modern times is the belief that coal and oil are the fossil remains of prehistoric plants and animals. These deposits were created from abiotic hydrocarbon gases deep within the earth. This discovery of methane on Mars may lead to the further discovery of hopanoids or hydrocarbon fuels on Mars and possibly a biomass of organisms similar to ones that are found deep within the earth. Thomas Gold predicted all of this years ago(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold). His seminal paper "The Deep,Hot Biosphere", which explains this is available here: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=49434 -Johanus

> I'd be more inclined to believe it's the Not-Invented-Here syndrome.

You couldn't get closer to this !!!

I'd imagine that it's about as beneficial for your back as cracking your knuckles is for your hands. As in: at best, it doesn't do any harm.

I hope not.

"however, habitual knuckle crackers were more likely to have hand swelling and lower grip strength."

St. John's Wort, for example, is comparable to synthetic antidepressants.

Here's 340-person study that refutes the claim. Got any better data?

That's the cool thing about science - nobody cares whether you believe it.

Try googling for 'rf double-blind' or if you'd like an actual journal article, here

In short, there was no correlation.

Citation needed. (And no, "Just fucking google it didn't work).

You asked for it - prepare for the steamroller, in the form of my apt scorn. You clearly lack facility with the English language (which is okay, but don't blame it on me!) and/or familiarity with the idea that Google permits as many as ten keywords. You could handle it with just, well, a handful:

gates foundation vaccinations big pharma patent law

With the above search, I located sufficient supporting material on the front page. One good overview of Gates' involvement (linking to various stories) is Bill Gates : the Philanthropist ? An overview of the problem in general can be found in the article Making Practical Markets for Vaccines: Why I decided that the Center for Global Development Report, Making Markets for Vaccines, offers poor advice to government and foundation leaders by Donald W Light.

Let's not forget the article that really provided the foundation for criticism of the Gates Foundation, Dark Cloud Over Good Works of Gates Foundation - this story doesn't even touch upon the issue of IP law, but it really provided all the proof that I (and many others) needed to know that their mission was not philanthropic. The Gates Foundation's mission is one involving profit, pure and simple. Perhaps you missed or have forgotten the fallout from this event; the foundation made a press release stating that they would be reviewing their investments, and then just a day or two later issued another stating that they would not be doing so (the original disappeared from their site at this time, naturally) because it would be too difficult a task. Yes friends, saving the world is hard. Not that Bill Gates would know - he's not actually trying.

Not to argue either way (really, no, I'm curious but not vested with either side), but this sort of appeal has always seemed a little odd to me.

After all, if they follow the statistical likelihoods in the average american population, you'd expect:

• about 1 in 4 neurosurgeons to have a diagnosable mental illness,
• about 1 in 17 to have a serious mental illness, and
• (by various sources, so no specific link; google away!) about 1 or 2 in 100 to suffer from extreme paranoia

Given that there are an estimated 3229 practicing neurosurgeons in the U.S., to be 80 confident that this guy isn't a (diagnosed or undiagnosed) loony you'd want to show (excuse my very rough math; I'm not firing up a statistical calculator to tell me the exact answer!) another 645 neurosurgeons that believe the same thing.

Fedora 8 is rather old at this point, and there have been a number of important timezone data updates since then. It's not inconceivable that something went wrong.

>Its starting to look like the increase is due to people living in an environment that is 'too clean'

Cite multiple peer reviewed studies in respectable journals or else stop spreading New Age myths on the internet. Thanks.

What, google too hard for you to use? There are literally hundreds of such studies with enough results to back my original statement.
How about from now on you fuck off with your self-aggrandizing judgmental imperative. Thanks.

Gibson, P.G., et al. Migration to a western country increases asthma symptoms but not eosinophilic airway inflammation. Pediatric Pulmonology, 2003; 36 (3):209-215

Marra F, Lynd L, Coombes M, et al. Does antibiotic exposure during infancy lead to development of asthma?: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Chest. 2006;129:610-618

Alm, J.S., et al. 1999. Atopy in children of families with anthroposophic lifestyle. Lancet 353(May 1):1485.

Oldstone MBA. Prevention of type 1 diabetes in nonobese diabetic mice by virusinfection. Science, 1988; 239: 500-2.

Braun-Fahrlander, C.H., et al. 1999. Prevalence of hay fever and allergic sensitization in farmer's children and their peers living in the same rural community. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Allergy 29(January):28.

Farooqi, I.S., and J.M. Hopkin. 1998. Early childhood infection and atopic disorder. Thorax 53(November):927.

Kramer, U., et al. 1999. Age of entry to day nursery and allergy in later childhood. Lancet 353(Feb. 6).

>Its starting to look like the increase is due to people living in an environment that is 'too clean'

Cite multiple peer reviewed studies in respectable journals or else stop spreading New Age myths on the internet. Thanks.

What, google too hard for you to use? There are literally hundreds of such studies with enough results to back my original statement.
How about from now on you fuck off with your self-aggrandizing judgmental imperative. Thanks.

Gibson, P.G., et al. Migration to a western country increases asthma symptoms but not eosinophilic airway inflammation. Pediatric Pulmonology, 2003; 36 (3):209-215

Marra F, Lynd L, Coombes M, et al. Does antibiotic exposure during infancy lead to development of asthma?: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Chest. 2006;129:610-618

Alm, J.S., et al. 1999. Atopy in children of families with anthroposophic lifestyle. Lancet 353(May 1):1485.

Oldstone MBA. Prevention of type 1 diabetes in nonobese diabetic mice by virusinfection. Science, 1988; 239: 500-2.

Braun-Fahrlander, C.H., et al. 1999. Prevalence of hay fever and allergic sensitization in farmer's children and their peers living in the same rural community. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Allergy 29(January):28.

Farooqi, I.S., and J.M. Hopkin. 1998. Early childhood infection and atopic disorder. Thorax 53(November):927.

Kramer, U., et al. 1999. Age of entry to day nursery and allergy in later childhood. Lancet 353(Feb. 6).

>Its starting to look like the increase is due to people living in an environment that is 'too clean'

Cite multiple peer reviewed studies in respectable journals or else stop spreading New Age myths on the internet. Thanks.

What, google too hard for you to use? There are literally hundreds of such studies with enough results to back my original statement.
How about from now on you fuck off with your self-aggrandizing judgmental imperative. Thanks.

Gibson, P.G., et al. Migration to a western country increases asthma symptoms but not eosinophilic airway inflammation. Pediatric Pulmonology, 2003; 36 (3):209-215

Marra F, Lynd L, Coombes M, et al. Does antibiotic exposure during infancy lead to development of asthma?: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Chest. 2006;129:610-618

Alm, J.S., et al. 1999. Atopy in children of families with anthroposophic lifestyle. Lancet 353(May 1):1485.

Oldstone MBA. Prevention of type 1 diabetes in nonobese diabetic mice by virusinfection. Science, 1988; 239: 500-2.

Braun-Fahrlander, C.H., et al. 1999. Prevalence of hay fever and allergic sensitization in farmer's children and their peers living in the same rural community. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Allergy 29(January):28.

Farooqi, I.S., and J.M. Hopkin. 1998. Early childhood infection and atopic disorder. Thorax 53(November):927.

Kramer, U., et al. 1999. Age of entry to day nursery and allergy in later childhood. Lancet 353(Feb. 6).

Just to clarify the headline and summary, and as is pointed out in the quote from Dr. Alan Thornhill in the original article:

Mutations in BRCA1 are linked to breast cancer , not just having the BRCA1 gene itself. BRCA1 is a critical tumor suppressor gene that helps maintain genomic integrity. Again, specific mutations in BRCA1 have been linked to breast cancer, not just "carrying the BRCA1 gene". Most of us carry the BRCA1 gene and it is expressed in a wide variety of tissues throughout our bodies. The BBC article uses the language such as "not carrying the BRCA1 gene", this is not entirely appropriate or even the issue at hand. The child will carry the BRCA1 gene, but without the specific mutations linked to breast cancer. (To be even more specific, the child will carry two alleles of the BRCA1 gene, one from each parent, both of which lack the mutations linked to breast cancer.)

That test was flawed. seriously flawed, I suggest you look again at why. The report is even worse.

gah, does no one know how to read a study?

I know they are hard. For example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=18591906&log$=activity

IN this blinded study, the waved away the large number of people that guessed which trial they where in. 41% and 44%. That complete invalidates the blinding.
thre were 78 patients. two groups of 34.
that means about* 15 people in each group knew the group they where in.
You remove those people from the study, and it is apparent the effect is negligible.
You want to see 20-25% range to indicate something might be happening, and then you want to repeat the test.

Bear that in mind when reading the study the article talks about.

*I'm making an example, strict number are needed becasue they won't change the percentage in any significant way.

And likely many of his other claims as well. Here's what PubMed says:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17568299?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

"Accupuncture may be an efficacious and acceptable nonexposure treatment option for PTSD. Larger trials with additional controls and methods are warranted to replicate and extend these findings."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6289567?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

"A brief characterisation is maccccde of the working principles underlying neural therapy under local anaesthesia or accupuncture. Common approaches to therapy are offered by disorders of autonomous regulation, including inflammatory processes, and by purely functional disorders.--There are many applications in gynaecology and obstetrics. A brief statistical information on lumbosacral pain is quoted as an example. Optimum performance can be expected from them, when used in combination with proven therapeutic methods. They provide a low-cost approach to reducing both the consumption of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals as well as time of morbidity."

There are many others outside of PubMed. And that is but one of the author's claims that actual published studies in the medical literature refute. This side-swipe skepticism is not science, it is marketing in order to sell a bullshit book. Ignore idiots like him and read peer reviewed journals and abstracts before basing your own judgment.

And likely many of his other claims as well. Here's what PubMed says:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17568299?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

"Accupuncture may be an efficacious and acceptable nonexposure treatment option for PTSD. Larger trials with additional controls and methods are warranted to replicate and extend these findings."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6289567?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

"A brief characterisation is maccccde of the working principles underlying neural therapy under local anaesthesia or accupuncture. Common approaches to therapy are offered by disorders of autonomous regulation, including inflammatory processes, and by purely functional disorders.--There are many applications in gynaecology and obstetrics. A brief statistical information on lumbosacral pain is quoted as an example. Optimum performance can be expected from them, when used in combination with proven therapeutic methods. They provide a low-cost approach to reducing both the consumption of antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals as well as time of morbidity."

There are many others outside of PubMed. And that is but one of the author's claims that actual published studies in the medical literature refute. This side-swipe skepticism is not science, it is marketing in order to sell a bullshit book. Ignore idiots like him and read peer reviewed journals and abstracts before basing your own judgment.

Where is this "scientific fact" that you speak of? The only "emotionally unstable" teens that I've read about...

If you search Google or Google Scholar for "teen brain development" you will find some relevant information. Like this or this or if you've got access, stuff like this.

A lot of scientific attention has focused on charting the ongoing physical maturation of the frontal lobes through adolescence and even into early adulthood. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, which includes things like self-regulation and impulse control. The frontal lobes are also involved in self-monitoring, which interestingly ties back to the grandparent poster's statement:

I'm sure you didn't think you were emotionally unstable, teens generally don't, doesn't mean you weren't.

Where is this "scientific fact" that you speak of? The only "emotionally unstable" teens that I've read about...

If you search Google or Google Scholar for "teen brain development" you will find some relevant information. Like this or this or if you've got access, stuff like this.

A lot of scientific attention has focused on charting the ongoing physical maturation of the frontal lobes through adolescence and even into early adulthood. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, which includes things like self-regulation and impulse control. The frontal lobes are also involved in self-monitoring, which interestingly ties back to the grandparent poster's statement:

I'm sure you didn't think you were emotionally unstable, teens generally don't, doesn't mean you weren't.

Tylenol PM is just regular Tylenol with diphenhydramine a.k.a. "Benadryl" (in the US and Canada) added to it. Using it regularly in normal doses isn't very harmful at all. However, there has been at least one study which seems to show that tolerance builds quickly towards the sedative effects of diphenhydramine builds quickly, becoming comparable to a placebo after only a few days of use. Link

YMMV.

Mostly we could even do with worse ones. Many of the tasks of a nurse don't require special training.

You apparently have no fscking idea what a nurse does.

One of best predictors of whether or not you survive your hospital stay is the quality of nursing care.

Nurses are responsible for infection control, for monitoring and record keeping of vital signs and other diagnostic data, and for administering medication. They are often the primary providers of patient education, and are often the ones who keep harried doctors from making stupid mistakes - in a "primary nursing" environment, nurses are the ones who are tracking and coordinating all the varied aspects of care, the ones who see the "big picture".

If you want to live, go to the hospital with the best nurses.

Ethanol consumption 1850-2005